


Emergence

by Ias, Nemonus



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 22:30:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14091102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemonus/pseuds/Nemonus
Summary: The fingers curved inward, first spokes to slay him and then the walls of a jail and then, worst of all, just fingers, blunt like human digits, curling onto the palm, because Nazara was the ship and the ship was (the?) Sovereign, and Saren was grasped within it, a splinter sunk into the flesh.He woke up on an operating table.





	Emergence

He remembered a debate.

As starships went, the Sovereign weighed heavy with absence of sound, crewed mostly by machines colored the same blue-black as the walls. Saren had acclimated to it in his time working with or for or beside his mysterious benefactor, and besides, Spectres grew comfortable with silence. Working with the stranger, the one the machines called Nazara, like and unlike working alone.

Saren had come here to view a hologram, the swirl of colors that represented the voice to which he spoke. Nazara did not like to communicate in any way others were likely to hear, so their meetings tended to be like this: one-sided conversations on board the flagship to which the benefactor had given him access. When Saren emerged onto the empty viewing room he saw the ship’s tendril-arms curving out into space like the fingers of a mechanical hand. Here at the front of the ship he could see far out the viewport, but there were no other vessels parked there to give the distance any reference points, no sleek, small starfighters readied for space. Instead, the vista seemed designed to intimidate.

Despite the climate-controlled air of the starship’s viewing station, the dark vault gave the impression of deep cold. As usual, the aging Spectre and the ageless monster waited for one another to show their bellies first.

He had been fidgety on the flight here, flipping through antique manuals about the type of guerilla warfare he used to know. _A commanding officer must be assured that his soldiers will not freeze up at the prospect of killing in close quarters, neither of waiting and considering the death for many minutes while the target moves into a clearer line of fire._ He circled his wrist, rubbed one hand against the other as if checking for dust on his striped armor, knowing the movements to be indicative of nerves but unable entirely to stop them. The hologram through which his benefactor often spoke, a confusion of neon hexagons, did not appear.

“It is time for the next step,” the voice said.

Saren was careful not to show his surprise when no hologram accompanied the declaration. Was he to speak alone with the ship, then? The idea, suggested as preposterous, began to feel eerily likely. Were there eyes in the walls? Would it be worse if the cameras were all facing outward, and to a mechanical eye Saren was standing in the dark?

“And what step is that?” Saren replied. Maybe the humans, the upstarts, would show more respect when from the black space around them or the ancient buried stones on turian ground comes an army more powerful than theirs. More powerful than the Spectres, and what did that make Saren? What did that make his office? The title of Spectre was like a false limb, one which he can manipulate and hold in his flesh hands but which did not move as part of himself. He tried to set thought of it aside.

“More tests,” Nazara said.

“More mystery,” Saren said. “We still haven’t elevated the turians above the galactic rabble. Haven’t stopped the council from believing the humans’ self-aggrandizing lies. Is the technology your end goal? Or is it the council you want? I can give you the council, but we must be patient, talk to them …”

_The council._ Saren showed his teeth, spat a hiss into the cold to insult the government of galactics who thought that they could press turians down like grapes into wine. Had Palaven lost itself when it first joined the council, or had the process taken time? Had it lost itself, or had it changed what it was until the military parades, the silver-green forests soaking in the heat, could not be recognized anymore? Pah. Was there a difference?

“Bypass the council,” the bodiless voice said.

“That isn’t what we arranged,” Saren snapped.

If this had been a debate between two turians, Saren thought, both speakers would have been feeling the prickle at the back of their necks as scales rose, some old hackling left behind after evolution stripped them of their feathers. But if this had been a debate between two turians, it would not have gone this long. Without saying as much, his ally had also bypassed the idea of working for the good of the majority.

This left Saren without a template for how to proceed. He had thought he understood aliens, thought he knew the nesting instincts of the asari and the colonization fervor of the humans enough to debate them. This conversation was something else, a blunt instrument unexpectedly and swiftly wielded in a way he had not yet seen. He floundered.

“Work with the geth is proceeding …”

“Have you studied the creation of the geth?” Nazara suddenly sounded more calm, a judge placing a sentence instead of a lawyer arguing a case.

“I have, yes. Extensively,” Saren said.

“Then you understand the value of keeping a hand in the work of your creations, of not allowing them to spread too far from your control.”

“The geth might say differently. The quarians enslaved them.”

“That is true. It does not change the fact that the quarians suffered in the end, their homeworld rendered uninhabitable. If they have not gifted the geth sentience in the first place, the machines would not have needed to be fought.”

Ah, now he understood. “If humans had never been allowed past their relay, we would not need to concern ourselves with their parasitism now.”

“Your ambitions are great.”

“Some Spectres have tried to stop uprising before they start, but …beyond these extreme cases it should not be control that we seek,” Saren said.

Or should it? He knew well where protection ended and control began, had debated this very same line with Nihlus over congenial drinks and in less congenial war zones. To be having it here, with his mysterious benefactor, seemed both strangely impossible and oddly domestic, as if he had sat down with Sovereign at a dinner table. The choices that separated life and death were always so theoretical, no matter in what context philosophers or the council attempted to present them.

“We grow tired of this,” Nazara said. “Have we not expressed to you sufficiently the scope of our capabilities? Do you doubt the many plans in which we have our hand?”

“Your claims are more vague today than usual.” The reply had been a snappish choice, borne of the warmth Saren had temporarily felt between himself and his nearly unknown debate partner, and as soon as he spoke he realized that it had been the wrong one.

Nazara’s voice did not tend toward emotion, but he thought that there was perhaps some exacerbation in it now. “Look at the stars, my friend,” Nazara said.

Saren did. The stretch of the ship’s tendrils was familiar, but as they began to move he was struck with the quiet horror that he imagined might also inflict anyone who came across the ship unawares. The fingers curved inward, first spokes to slay him and then the walls of a jail and then, worst of all, just fingers, blunt like human digits, curling onto the palm, because Nazara was the ship and the ship was (the?) Sovereign, and Saren was grasped within it, a splinter sunk into the flesh.

He woke up on an operating table.

                                               

* * *

 

 

“In the end, it comes down to a series of choices.”

The embassies were almost empty this late in the evening. Outside, the strip of sky curving around the inside of the Presidium had faded to the deep blue of its evening setting, a curl of artificial dusk. Saren stood at the window of the office he had chosen to conduct the interview.  In the chair behind him, he heard Nihlus Kryik shift.

“Who do you serve?” Saren’s voice echoed against the glass. “What are you fighting to protect?” He turned back to the figure sitting stiffly in the chair. “And of course: what are you willing to sacrifice, to do what must be done?”

“Do you expect me to answer?”

Saren’s mandibles twitched in amusement. “If you claimed to be able to answer them so easily, Kryik, I might have to take you as a fool.”

“Then it’s lucky I had no intent on trying.”

Returning to his desk, Saren picked up the datapad with Nihlus’s file. He’d read it already, of course, multiple times, scrutinizing it carefully before arranging this meeting. Now he kept his eyes on the man himself, and weighed what he saw.

“Do you know why you’re here?” Saren asked.

Nihlus cocked his head. “I was surprised to receive your request for a private interview. I did not expect to be discussing philosophy.”

It was a question, one Nihlus did not wish to be caught asking. To be invited for a private interview with a Council Spectre with no explanation or cause must have struck him as a threat. Still, he did not appear nervous. Only wary, as he should be.

“And what did you expect?” Saren said.

“You are personal friends with my commanding officer. I have to assume you heard my name from him.”

“Your name, and then some. The rest I found on my own.” Saren set the datapad down on the desk between them. Nihlus eyes darted to it only briefly, but it was enough; Saren wanted him to know that he had no secrets here. “You were born outside Hierarchy space, joined the military a year late—did that present a challenge?”

“To an extent.”

“And what of your status as an outsider? Was that difficult for you?”

“At times.”

Uncommunicative. Responding only to what could not be avoided. Privately delighted, Saren sat back in his chair to regard Nihlus sternly. “Your history in the military has been varied, to put it lightly. Reassigned to a new squad three times, multiple instances of insubordination—and it appears you were recently assigned to a new squad, for the third time—”

“Am I being accused of something, sir?” Nihlus’s tone was so scrubbed of emotion that it almost masked the blatant interruption.  

In spite of himself, Saren’s subvocals pitched higher in approval. Such flaunting of authority was what had made Kyrik such a poor soldier, and also what could make him such a powerful Spectre. There was raw potential there, if Saren could shape it.

Saren turned in his chair to face the windows once more. This was not his office—the furniture, though designed for turian physiology, held no special sentiment; there was nothing here of himself. “Sergeant Devalis speaks highly of you, though he may not know it. During your last mission—the one which resulted in your reassignment, if I am not mistaken—you disobeyed a direct order and, as a result, singled-handedly routed an enemy patrol and saved your entire squad. That is certainly an uncommon form of disgrace.”

“A soldier who cannot follow orders has very little uses.” The words were as stiff as a dress uniform.

“A soldier is a tool. In the hands of one who knows their uses, tools can be valuable things. But a craftsman does not appreciate it when his tools begin to think for themselves.” Saren cast a glance over his shoulder. “You have great potential, Nihlus. Not as a soldier, certainly, but there are other ways to serve the Hierarchy.”  
A long hesitation, as Nihlus scoped the ground beneath his feet for the tripwire. “I am not certain I understand.”

“I imagine not. Walk with me.” Saren rose with no further ado, almost leaving Nihlus behind as he strode from the empty room, taking nothing with him and leaving nothing of his own behind. For a moment he thought that Kryik would not follow, until his footsteps joined Saren’s on their path down the hallway. The corridors of the Embassies were almost empty, only a few clerks working late who did not look up to see Saren pass. Nihlus did not ask where they were going.

They took  the elevator and made the brief walk down the docking platforms in silent; Nihlus tense and wary, Saren unconcerned. Ships hurried to and from their moorings across the wide windows spanning half the corridor; the arms of the wards were strange shattered landscapes hanging at odd angles in the nebula beyond. At last Saren stopped before the final door. Outside, the upper curve of his ship’s hull glinted in the light from the nebula outside.

“This is my ship,” Saren said. “I decide where it goes, what function it serves—who comes aboard. If you should choose to, you may accompany me on it,” he said, and watched Nihlus’s face. A flicker of shock, quickly quelled; good. He would make a suitable liar, when the time came.

“As a partner?”  he said at last.

Saren allowed his mandibles to flex long and slow in pointed amusement. Nihlus blinked, and reconsidered. “As a mentor, then.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I see something in you that is worth preserving.” Saren clasped his hands loosely behind his back and began to pace a slow, thoughtful track beside the windows. “Some people are meant to follow, Nihlus; to submit to a greater authority, and let it wield them.” Beyond the window, an Alliance frigate passed. Saren suppressed the rumble of distaste that threatened to edge into his subvocals. “I do not believe you are one of them.”

“And are you?” Nihlus stared at him sharply. “Even the Spectres are subject to the Council’s rule.”

“It is true. No single person can utterly shake off the hands that close around them. But perhaps I can teach you how to wield others as they would wield you.”

When he turned back, Nihlus was following his gaze out the window, deep in thought. Interesting. Saren had not considered the possibility that he might refuse. With an air of nonchalance, he passed Nihlus on the way to the airlock door. “Think very carefully on those choices, Nihlus. I am offering you the ability to answer them for yourself, before they are stripped from you one by one—and you become nothing more than what another requires you to be.”

Nihlus stared into his eyes without flinching. When he spoke, it was with the weight of every considered option behind his words. “The third question is simple. I am willing to sacrifice everything.”

( _Everything_ —)

But no, no, it hadn’t happened then—Nihlus had said nothing as he stood on the docks, and the doors of Saren’s shuttle closed between them like the blades of a trap. It would be months before the mission on Lairos when he and Nihlus sat in the abandoned outpost without even the comfort of a fire, stranded with only a slim hope of survival; and they spoke, and Nihlus looked into his eyes, and said that terrible word.

(But no, no, not this, this wasn’t what he meant—)

The port slid free from the back of Saren’s skull, and the memory of how Nihlus had responded went black as the sudden awareness of the emptiness Sovereign had left in its wake.. In the lifetime where Saren was being slowly vivisected, that memory would flare bright and ironic before his eyes, long after it was far too late.

 

* * *

 

 

 

After, there was no hiding from it.

Sovereign moved through the dark like a behemoth through primordial seas. Stars floated like flecks of silt. The ship exuded the sense of something ancient, inevitable, hungry in a way that was incomprehensible to its prey.

Saren walked its passageways. They stood silent, empty, vast. Built for some greater and unknowable purpose than the convenience of organic life forms. He had moved through them many times before, only with no knowledge that he was treading within the dry veins of something alive. But no, not alive—but _aware_ , awake, a creature-thing with a mind and a metal body that felt the tiny movements of his passage within it.

All this time, he had been swallowed whole.

There was a buzzing in his head that began, he thought, not long after he boarded the ship after his most recent mission. Ever since Sovereign had revealed itself to him, things had grown… simpler. There was no longer a need to question every order and detail, for the scope of Sovereign’s power made such petty quibbling ridiculous. It was only after he left the great ship that the doubts began to gnaw at him, and the ache that ran into his skull as if the spines of his fringe were being slowly pressed into his brain began to dull. Now, as he made his way to the room which Sovereign had directed him, the vast spaces within the ship seemed to vibrate around him like a resonating chamber. A hum which pressed in on all sides as if the emptiness contained mass and weight.

Saren clenched his mandibles tighter to his face to fight back the strangeness in his head. _This_ was the power he sought. It did not belong to him, but he could flow beside it, shape the world in a parallel direction and prune away the strands which would not follow.

And so when he came to the vast doorway, he approached it without hesitation or fear.

It was not quite a medical bay. “Medicine” implied healing. The implement hung from the vast reaches of the ceiling like a chandelier of knives, a thing of needles, scalpels, nozzles of surgical glue, and guns loaded with metal staples. No doctors. Not even any geth. Saren could already imagine its arms twitching to life on their own accord, moved by the mind which surrounded him even now.

It dangled over the raised slab in the center of the room where Saren assumed a body was meant to lie. His body, in fact.

“Approach the pod.”

(Sovereign’s words, like a stone thrown into the center of a still pool, rippling—)

Saren obeyed. He had decided some time ago, when all of this began, that it was important to appear eager to comply. When he stopped before it, he could see that the surface of the slab was of the same metal musculature that lined the inner chambers of the ship. A depression in its center outlined a shape that, he imagined, would fit him almost perfectly.

“Lie down.”

Saren knew he was imagining the impatience in Sovereign’s voice. The Reaper spoke without inflection. He doubted it experienced emotion at all. And yet as Saren lingered at the edge of the operating table the room seemed to contract without moving, some intense force bending towards him.

“I am still unconvinced of the necessity of this operation,” Saren said. Sovereign could not force him. _Would_ not force him, for to do so would shatter the compliance the Reaper relied on to carry out its will. These thoughts gave Saren some solace, as he stood before the altar and prepared his offering.

“You are currently inadequate,” Sovereign said without malice. “Your form of life is incompatible with perfection. But we can bring you closer.”

Saren laid a hand on the edge of the table. It thrummed to life at his touch, its long wait almost at an end. He understood the risks. He understood the sacrifices which would be required of him. It was a narrow precipice which he had been chosen to walk, and on either side lay oblivion for every living being in the universe. This was, in the end, his choice.

He lay down on the table, and things began happening very quickly.

The surface on which he lay lowered into the slab, until its walls rose over him entirely. Not a table, but a tomb; and its walls were lined with metal implements, a thicket of needles on folded metal arms, tilted down yet beginning to twitch as his presence awakened them. The indentation which fit his body grew tighter. Metal bands rose to encircle his wrists, ankles, waist, neck. Instinct told him to fight, and he forced his muscles to go as slack as if he were not in the jaws of some awful creature, its minute teeth closing in. Such reactions would be the death of his species. The key was to submit. Lose a piece here, a freedom there, but for the survival of Palaven and the turian species, what price could be too high? The alternative was to be reduced to nothing at all.

Head locked in place, he could not look away as the thing in the ceiling above him came alive. Piece by piece it awakened, spread dozens of its arms, a mechanical insect lowering its feelers to him until he could see nothing else. Metal probed over his chest, his shoulders, his right arm—and then decided on his left.

Saren stared straight ahead and did not see what the machine did to make his entire left arm go numb. He clenched his fingers, and could not tell if they moved; the talons of his right hand dug into his palms until he felt something wet and warm well up beneath them. _Do not move. Remain calm, and compliant._ More needles descended. In the flash he caught before they left his field of vision, they appeared serrated.

“You said it would only be the hand.” His words came as plaintive as a child’s, and yet he could not hold them back. Slowly, the realization that he could still feel, numbly, the weight of his limb. There was no pain; only the distant sensation of metal entering his flesh, unstitching him like the seam of an old piece of cloth.

“The hand alone is inadequate.” Sovereign’s voice searched for purchase in Saren’s mind, grinding like stone on stone. Like a piece of a mountain peeling away and falling into a chasm, with Saren beneath it. His arm was a blank space in his awareness. He realized he was still clenching and unclenching the fingers of his left hand, or trying to—he felt nothing. Out of the corner of his eye, a pair of tweezers pulled a long fibrous vein out of his shoulder and held its end aloft. Nerves and sinews joined it as what they had been connected to was slowly stripped away.

He rose above horror like a boat borne high by a wave as the arm was unraveled. Veins pulled free like worms from his meat, and he could feel them slipping out of him. Chunks of blue flesh followed. After a short while, the pliers whose beak were the size of his hands lowered beyond his field of vision. His body jolted as the gristle cracked and popped, once, twice, the sound like wet wood slowly snapping.

Then with one final jerk, it was over. He tried not to watch as the picked bloody bones were lifted away.

The fibers still connected to Saren’s body splayed out from his shoulder like a sunburst. It occurred to him that his breathing was irregular, his heartbeat too fast, the chemicals in his body revealing the stress he refused to show; Sovereign made no comment. Perhaps it did not care whether Saren went willingly and unafraid.

Saren did not see the new arm descend. His vision was beginning to blur out. The splay of his body folded away, strand by strand. Sewn into the new piece of himself, woven until the two were one. A faint tugging in places he should not have been able to feel, inside the meat of him.

No pain, even as the surface rose out of the pod once more, and the bands which restrained him slid away. When he sat up, a while after the nausea had subsided but not before the pain, Saren was surprised when the empty space where his arm used to be gripped the edge of the table.

As he raised the arm that was not his arm to the harsh light of the chamber and saw the blue implants that gleamed like eyes from within the whorls of metal flesh, as he touched his own face and felt the click of metal on his plates but nothing from his fingers, he understood, at once and with a merciful dearth of emotion, that the hand was a tool to be wielded, now, and nothing more; there was something beautiful to be found in that idea if he concentrated very hard on not feeling the place beyond his shoulder where feeling should be.

“Thank you,” he said, because if he was not grateful, if he did not see the wisdom in how Sovereign had ground metal through the gristle in his shoulder until it popped free, in the whirr of machines sewing his own tendons into a metal shell, if _this was not what he wanted_ , then what had he done?

Sovereign said nothing at all.

The next day, the pain was worse.

Painkillers were built in to the arm, a combat modification as strong as any armor. He felt the pain at a distance, gray and helpless but present like a weight. He walked the halls to distract himself, trying not to think about the processes going on in his arm, in his chest. His heartbeat had been slow and steady, lately.

He made his way to a hangar. Although the clawed fingers of the ship were the features which seemed most distinct to Saren, most ominous and absurd in their turian anatomy, they did not reach into the vacuum and clutch his ship. Docking ports along the side of the bulk of the hull were wide enough for ships of various sizes, from geth drones to Saren’s four-man turian fighter to bombers and capital ships. Blue lights ringed each one like the lures on the mouths of a sea creature.

He walked with his head held high as he crossed the gantry from his ship to the control room on the other side of the hangar. His metal arm was heavy, a dragging weight on him, but one which he could carry. His plans were progressing carefully and well: he had made an ally today, an asari matriarch old and full of schemes, who held a brace of commandos by the collars and could command cocktail-dress assassins and back alley gang leaders with equal grace and appropriate tact. Matriarch Benezia could also transform, and so she had found a kindred creature in Sovereign.

In the control room he paused, caught by one of those blue lights.

A diode flashed: a warning of a mechanical part which had loosened, falling victim to internal gravity and jamming the mechanism of the energy airlock. He reached out one claw, spun the wheel of light to examine the problem. He had done diagnostics like this aboard a turian cruiser, while Nihlus had been fighting like a storybook hero and Saren had waited for his move. The ship monitored itself like a key monitored the inside of a lock, one tumbler at a time, and he had to urge it to concentrate on a particular one.

There: the diagnostic was more clear. He could tell which door had malfunctioned, where it was along the great length of the ship. The symbols which on a turian ship would have expressed the severity of the problem did not appear, however. Of course Sovereign would be different. Saren showed his graying teeth, silently berating himself and considering for the briefest moment that he might also spite the cameras with the view of his predatory maw. He did not even know what language Sovereign thought its vast thoughts in, if at all — the support crew was made up primarily of geth units.

If he had been on the ship where he had been an officer, with Nihlus beside him somehow berating and acting cavalier at the same time, there would have been symbols on the side to determine to whom the text would be assigned.

(Saren had wanted to protect Nihlus, and Nihlus had wanted to drift away, caught by scent or some other trap in the lie that humanity presented before the council in parade-clean armor —)

He opened a new display window. The hologram spread more lights around him. The console was small, not as impressive or immersive as a galaxy map or public hologram, but after the dark of space it looked like a galaxy unto itself. Most of the hallways inside the Reaper were dark, he considered gradually. He had grown used to walking them mostly by feel, so this constellation was like a sunny day …

He was just beginning to understand the menus he had called up when Sovereign spoke. The source of the voice, like the lack of light, had never struck him as particularly unusual. It was common, even mundane, for starships to have intercomms; the fact that the voice was sourceless was not a concern, even if the slight echo behind it did not sound like the crackle of static or momentary catch-up of radio delay.

“That is unnecessary,” said the voice.

“I’m going to fix it.”

“It does not need fixing.”

“If any ships are incoming …” But would they? He hesitated, the circular red hologram of the warning light overlapping his wrist like a guillotine blade.

“Is one bay of concern to our majesty? It is as if I were to concern myself with the death of one organism in your gut.”

_Have you not done that before?_ The hallways _had_ been dark, and that operating room so bright …

“You are concerned for small things, Saren.”

Had Sovereign said his name before? _Had_ he been able to see the floor in front of him when he had walked across the gantry, remarking at the new strength and new weight in his limbs? How long had it been since lights had caught his eyes, in here?

Saren shook his head. His teeth did not make him a predator; now they made him just a framework of bone. “Why should I not be? Your air is escaping. A glorious fleet cannot be made up of one hulk with a hole in it.” Both of his hands rested loosely on the console now, mismatched fingers no longer aligned to the lighted holograms.

“We will repair ourself, Saren. Rest your hands. See that our nature is reparation unto itself, and small wounds do not damage it.”

That made sense, didn’t it? Sovereign was beyond him, watching not just the small glowing things but also the leviathans in the deep of the ocean. Saren did not understand its nature, even if parts of it looked like starship bays and airlocks, gantries and surgeries. He was standing in the guts of a deity, and one light did not matter.

What was it that had even mattered to him?

Nihlus, though. He had been thinking of Nihlus for some reason, reminiscing on the days when war had been simple and no one had thought of admitting humans to the council. Animals were admitted to matters of state, now, and Nihlus would have understood the absurdity of it.

One of the airlocks in the turian cruiser was broken, and the infantry boys should be reminded not to try any heroics in that bay until it was repaired.

His hands drifted back to the holograms.

“It is **UNNECESSARY**.” The force of Sovereign’s voice snapped through the air like electrical current. Saren stumbled away from the console, where his flesh hand had already begun to dance over patterns not designed for this ship at all, commands he had grown used to on turian cruisers.

He shook his head. For a moment there had been a impression as if he had floated outside of Sovereign, his own concerns small and bereft of the emotion that had so recently plagued them. He was scope, he was scale, he was the slowly cooling curvature of space, and his interest in his own body/the ship’s body/the space in which Palaven floated had shrunken down to a shard. He straightened up and turned away from the console, disinterested in the small and healing scar the breach represented.

Those lights, blue as blood, repelled him. He did not stop to see whether the hallway in front of him was lit when he continued to the center of the ship, where he would tell Sovereign about his connections among the asari elite. The concept of speaking to the Reaper from the hangar had wafted away from him.

 

* * *

 

 

The first shot took out the first human so neatly that the other three did not immediately understand what was happening to them. In the time it took for them to see their companion fall, to see the blood spray which fanned out over the door’s access panel behind him, to face the vast darkness of the cargo bay with its topography of crates and ledges turned suddenly frightening, it was already over.

Two bullets and two fresh bodies; the last alive broke formation and ran. The shot caught him in the lower back, _sloppy_ , fired too quickly. The human fell headfirst to the floor and could not drag himself away before the shadow slipped from its perch across the room to end it with an omnitool blade. That much, at least, was neat.

Saren watched from the security room. He had already disabled the security alarms. One final squad of insurgents remained in the control center. Their increasingly frantic demands for reports from their dead companions were beginning to grate. He silenced their feed.

The humans wanted land, as their species always did. Specifically, a coveted garden world in the Terminus systems, whose colonization rights the Council had yet to decide. The batarians had already established a small colony on the planet’s surface before the humans decided they wanted it. It was common knowledge the Council would fall on the side of whichever group had an established settlement on the planet’s surface; and so the humans needed a colony, and they needed the batarians gone.

Nihlus spoke. “Moving in.”

Saren watched the small image of him on the security monitor sidle up to the door, checking the perimeter with an exaggerated sweep of his head; that flair for the dramatic that Saren suspected he could come to despise in time. Or perhaps it wasn’t a flair at all, but simply a lack of self-awareness. Nihlus was young. Over-serious, and over-eager. In truth Saren saw very little of himself in his Spectre trainee, and perhaps that was why he chose him. Raw potential needed focus. Nihlus could be so much _more_ , if only he allowed himself.

“You are clear to the next checkpoint,” Saren said. He remotely disabled the door’s complicated patchwork of homemade code, and Nihlus slipped into the heart of the ship like a knife between the ribs.

In the previous two weeks, he and Nihlus had struggled to isolate the core of the organization responsible for a series of escalating attacks against the batarian colonists on Seyged. The amateurs aboard this ship were a minor target in themselves, but with skill this operation would yield intel leading to the ringleaders.

Extracting that intel was Nihlus’s duty. For the moment, Saren would only watch.

On the security monitor, Nihlus moved down the dimly lit corridor. Saren’s digits moved over the keys. The body of the human he had dispatched lay where he had tipped it from its chair. The human had not even known he was in the room before the blade slid into the back of his neck.

“Approaching the final door.”

“Understood,” Saren said. He glanced at the monitor. “Six hostiles present. Heavy armor and weaponry. They will be expecting you.”

“Leave that to me.” Nihlus pressed himself to the wall beside the door, waiting for Saren to unlock it. Meanwhile Saren continued typing.

“Saren?” Tension grating in Nihlus’s subvocals.  

“Hold position.” Saren finished, checked, doubled checked in the span of seconds. Only when he was certain did he enter the code to override the door locks. “Final checkpoint is a go on my mark. Mark.”

The door slid open, and every gun in the room raised to point in its direction, crouching behind the line of computer consoles between them and the open door. The normal shouting with undercurrents of fear, which Saren disregarded. He watched Nihlus closely, curious to see which mistake Nihlus was going to make.

“This is Spectre Nihlus Kryik,” he called without edging out from behind the cover of the door. “The rest of your team has been neutralized; you are trapped, and outnumbered.” A decent bluff. Panic rippled through the humans, their hands closing even tighter around the guns leveled at the empty doorway.

“I did not come here to kill you,” Nihlus continued. It was a convincing lie, but perhaps because Nihlus truly believed it. “Lay down your arms, and you will not be harmed.”

The security camera itself contained no microphone; the lead human’s response was unintelligible through Nihlus’s audio channel. Whatever he said, it was enough to cause Nihlus to slowly lower his gun. Saren’s mandibles twitched in derision. With a sharp word from their commander, the humans began to lower their weapons as well. Nihlus peeled his back off the wall, and stepped out from behind the door.

From multiple vantage points throughout the room Saren watched his trainee’s absurd gesture of good faith. At least his shields were at full capacity. But Saren’s attention was not on Nihlus alone. He also watched the human commander toss his gun to the floor at Nihlus’s feet, at the same moment his other hand settled on the command console before him. He moved very quickly, but Saren was quicker.

The power surge began as a frenzied string of numbers on the console before him, and ended as an electrical discharge through the computer consoles that appeared on the monitors as tendrils of light crawling over the bodies of the six humans standing within range. The moment it flared out, they crumpled to the ground. Nihlus leapt back, had the sense to seek cover though far too late; as the final fizzles of electricity spat out and then died, he rose from cover, checked the bodies, and stared into the eye of the security camera. Saren had already begun to move.

By the time he reached the final room Nihlus had rebooted the overloaded consoles, fingers tapping at the keys. He did not look up as Saren entered. “There’s a lot here to process,” he said. “I believe we will have the location of the main base.”

Saren had not often heard Nihlus express emotion, but he recognized the anger in him now. The sharp glance Nihlus shot through the smoke and smell of cooking meat confirmed it.

“They were surrendering. Killing them was unnecessary.” He spoke calmly in spite of it all. One of the reasons Saren believed Nihlus had true potential.

“The leader was about to delete all the data on this base’s computer systems.”

Nihlus glanced at the security camera in the back corner of the room. After a moment he shook his head. “I could have gotten the intel out of them.”

“No,” Saren said patiently. “They would never have helped you, Nihlus. The price of surrender was too high.”

Nihlus stared down at the bodies, expression blank. “The price they paid was higher.”

Saren laid a hand on Nihlus’s shoulder pauldron. “And yet it came easy to them. When the choice is between oblivion or becoming a tool for the thing which hates you, oblivion is often simpler.”

From the way Nihlus turned away, Saren could tell he did not yet understand. Saren knew that if Nihlus were in the same position, he would have done as the humans had done without even understanding why. Perhaps that was why Saren tightened his grip to turn Nihlus to face him, staring into his eyes as if he could force the truth into them.  

 “There comes a time—there will _always_ come a time—when it becomes necessary that you make that choice for them.” Perhaps Nihlus still did not understand, but neither did he argue.

                                                                             

* * *

 

 

“Your body requires further modification.”

“Why?”

Saren had grown accustomed to his new arm. Although it was quick and cold as a robotic arm, he had walked his own fingers up the alien shoulder enough to know that the porous strands held warmth like skin. The cords, if tugged, were solidly rooted and alarmingly dense. The join was shielded by the armor plate at his shoulder. Once he had nightmared that the joint was rotting, the arm becoming a maggoty weight, and he still thought of that and half expected the fingers of his left hand to sink in when he touched the geth-flesh.

He had already succeeded in finding out some information from the Reaper’s systems, even if it did not want him to. It did not see danger in Saren viewing the records of attempts at indoctrination, all the studies and calculations that went into deciding who the Reaper would put under thrall and who would remain free. Days ago he had watched Benezia’s lieutenant Shiala siat glassy-eyed in front of Benezia, the two of them speaking ritual words to one another that would place the young asari further under Sovereign’s control. Saren knew that when counted by years Shiala was older than he was, but in that chair she looked innocent and foolish. Indoctrination stifled her mind.

Saren had not experienced the same happening to him.

He shook off this thought as best he could, concentrating on the disembodied voice of Sovereign instead. When left unattended, the arm swung at his side naturally. Should that surprise him? It was as much a jolt as the nightmares had been, sometimes.

Sovereign did not answer.

“Why?” Saren looked up from the console he had been examining.

“You need me!” Saren slammed his geth hand down on the console more heavily than intended. With no face to look at, he could not tell whether Sovereign was angry, amused, or nonplussed. “I deserve an explanation. The wheels that drive this machine are mired without my voice on the council. I am your mouth.”

Sovereign let the silence settle for two of Sovereign’s quick heartbeats. “This will protect you,” it said. “You lean on your armor; I will make it part of you. Enhance your reflexes, your organs. We have seen such creatures that flit across the stars, beasts made of skin as thick as metal. They all fell equally quickly. Their defenses could not save them. I could offer you a defense they never had.”

_Save them from_ you? But the image of civilizations dying because their rulers had refused to compromise arose to him, cosmic and dumb. He would not tell that story over again. He would not let humanity — or turians like Nihlus — delude themselves into fatal heroism without at least attempting to demonstrate to them the endurance needed for such important negotiation.

“Tell me what you will do,” Saren repeated.

“I will give you armor,” Sovereign gently replied.

Saren agreed.

The medical pod did not seem to have changed since it had removed his arm. Perhaps it looked less organic now, less like a bowl made of geth-skin and more like the sort of metal bed found in turian hospitals. The surface was smooth when he lay on it, with no discernable temperature because he still wore his own armor. He had grown used to the thick manipulator arms, which this time were draped with coils of meticulously aligned cables. He had grown used to the single injection in his leg, and to the numbness.

He did not expect that injection to suddenly expand as the needle tip unfolded into a coin-sized metal cap and punched through both his armor and his thigh. He did not expect to feel many strange grips at the back of his neck, weighing him down as he tried to instinctively flinch upward away from the source of the pain. The cables unfolded into arms, then curtains around him, blocking out the light before they were realigned with his ribs.

He had thought that he was brave. He had seen enough terrible things that shock shied away from him. The fear when the cables darted into the armor over his gut was too great not to blur his vision.  

At some point he cried out, although even as he did his own voice sounded distant. It was a memory or a recording, or he split himself from himself so he did not have to think about the operation. Instead, he made excuses. Pleaded as if wanting something to happen had any effect on whether it did.

“ _I wanted to fix the ship! I wanted to help my people! Asari have tens of thousands of years to live, and humans have the favor of the council and the luck of numbers, and turians have what, now? What do we have when the war is declared over and we lost this one, we were aggressors, we are the villains in the night with long claws and_ I just wanted to be respected —

_You understand that, don’t you? You see how I look at you, how Benezia looks at you. You want to speak with the voice of a primarch but your skin is all chitin, like a bug. We see you and we think you are grotesque because you cannot be squashed, your fluids brushed away on the stone. You want to be a god but_ we see you. I do. _Through me, the turians do._ We know what you are and we permit you to exist —”

Pieces of his armor dropped away, and something blue followed. A piece of him, dotted with white fat.

_It is only by our mercy that you have been allowed to live._

One of Saren’s hands was thrashing against the side of the operating pod, fingers curling over it like a child’s reflex. He wasn’t sure whether it was the new hand or his own.

_I permit this_ , he panted, although he could not be certain whether he was speaking out loud or not. _I permit this. I permit this._

Once he emerged from his insistence and found the side of the pod spattered in blue, his side deflated. Strips of armor and skin had been peeled back like a shrapnel wound, and wasn’t that reassuring? He understood that type of wound. Understood who to blame for them, how to treat them. Then the cables began to move again and he needed to insist to himself that what he saw made sense, needed to repeat those words over and over, in order to keep away the terror and the slowly emerging pain.

When the mechanical arms retreated, the pain slowly and cautiously considered its chances. Like a carrion creature, it hovered over him. He moved slightly, twitching his left shoulder and left foot, and found that he was no longer held immobile. The sides of the pod had flattened out even further, so that he could have rolled over his right side without too much trouble if he had wanted to.

His left would prove more difficult. Bundles of wires stuck out from his side like broken ribs, curving around to his back. It was difficult to tell whether his side was touching the flat surface or if at some point he had been lifted up by the cords and never touched the bed again. Touching the cords yielded no pain at all, although his effort to reach into the depression, lined with luminescence, into which the cords ran was met with an instinctive horror he could not combat even as it did not touch his mind. None of it hurt. None of it should have hurt, because he was part of Sovereign, and Sovereign did not feel the sort of pain that Saren, distantly, remembered.

He aimed his feet for the ground and sat up feeling like a child in a chair too high for it, uncertain of the distance he needed to reach in order to stand. There would be time to get used to this. Time to understand how — what had Sovereign said?

“Armor?” Saren muttered. “Am I _armored **now**_?” By the time he finished speaking his voice was a roar, echoing off the strange chamber. The surgical claws had retracted, leaving the room itself looking like an empty, bloodless wound.

It might all have been a trap, a chance for Sovereign to — what, trick Saren into something?

As soon as he considered it, Sovereign's voice resolved out of the background hum. “Armored, made more efficient. You will be able to spend time in the vacuum of space, if you find yourself there.”

Saren nodded. Lifting the geth hand, he weighed it against the odd hollow in his chest. Funny how the arm felt familiar now, relatively natural. He had woken up from a sleep, and why should he be surprised if some things were different? Creatures moved in the night. Sovereign made some small sound of observation, or perhaps it was just the metal in the ship moving, readjusting to the stresses around it. A tired, languid creak, with claws for now tucked away in the body of some other prey.

Soon enough, though, Saren and Sovereign would master the fleet they needed. Would the vacuum of space be able to hurt either of them now? He considered it for a little while, the idea that if he floated out there he would feel no cold. What about the scales on his remaining hand? What about his face? But the idea of floating was calming.

He looked again at the pipes that wrapped around him. They made it difficult but not impossible for him to rotate his body to the left. His armor had been pinned to him so that — yes, that made sense with what Sovereign had said. A lesser being might have panicked, might have worried about how he would clean himself or how he would look to a council that had known him to wear different armor, different colors, entirely.

“I understand,” he said.

Sovereign did not answer.

Saren tested his mobility further, bending to touch the bundle of cables that looped across to his thigh. Again the recognition that there should have been pain, or the memory of it. Maybe there had been, and the memory had also scabbed over. The council would probably notice that he looked different — although of course there would be no honor in that recognition, none of the glory that came with the N7 stripe.

He sighed and straightened up. Back to business. Surely there was some to attend.

                                                                

* * *

 

 

Transformation, the kind of biological slop caterpillars became in cocoons. Why was it that Earth and Thessia had created such open biological templates? Animals on Palaven tended to thick shells and restrictive genes, the kind of history that meant they couldn’t eat the foods of their enemies _or_ allies. He opened and closed his flesh hand over and over, waiting for Benezia to arrive. The click of ungloved scales was reassuringly solid.

Benezia’s footsteps hit hard too. She had brought commandos, including Shiala, their eyes glazed with wonder as they looked at Sovereign’s metal shell.

“The geth troopers are spreading as planned,” Saren began without preamble. If Sovereign wished to be part of the conversation, it would make itself known.

“Progress on the rachni continues to go smoothly,” Benezia replied. “Binary Helix is proving very useful.”

“Good.”

“I could have sent you a text message for that.” Benezia tilted her head, her smile acquiring a faint air of mockery. Age had worn down none of her corners. It honed them to jagged edges, made her sharp. “What was it you wanted to show me here?”

_Proof_ , he thought. _Proof of loyalty, proof of existence._

She narrowed her eyes, made quick-flick hand gestures at the commandos telling them to wait before they made whatever move she had prepared them for. In the front of the group, Shiala traded gray glances with the soldier beside her.

“Follow me,” Saren said. He walked down the corridor that seemed to call to him, wondering briefly whether he had really known why he had called Benezia. Once, he had thought of her as _his_ mentor. But he had outgrown that role while she had stayed the same, a millennia of knowledge at her disposal while he fumbled through half a century. It was a humiliation, to be forever incapable of surpassing her. Trapped forever in the role of a student who could never hope to contain the sheer weight of that knowledge.

He dismissed the idea. If he focused on that for too long it would beat against his mind like a fly against glass, and then what would he be good for? Consumed by thought, just a body in muck and the muck in the body. He must be more than that, although part of him knew very well that he was not.

He coughed.

“Stressful work, but we will be prepared when the time comes,” Benezia said.

“Yes.” Another cough. The image of butterflies caught in cocoons, beating sticky wings, caught in his brain like the phlegm in his throat.

Benezia angled around him. “Saren.”

He coughed harder, spat onto the shining onyx floor. Her expression hardly changed, but her hand movements flashed again.

The soldier from the front of the group walked between Saren and Benezia as he straightened up and they continued down the corridor. Benezia still radiated calm observation, a teacher who could never possibly be impressed by her student.

Saren brought them to the assembly line.

Heretic geth had come to Sovereign in hundreds. The little that Saren knew of their society included how each body was simply a platform for a network of multiple intelligences, so the number of bodies was dependent on physical resources rather than any sort of individual effort. Sovereign knew how to mine. The geth knew how to repair themselves. Therefore, the ship included the assembly bay, as much medical facility and diagnostic machine as the birthplace of additional geth soldiers. It reminded Saren of a hangar, light swooping down from above and rising up as platforms rose and fell.

He stopped in front of a conveyor belt of complete units. A scanner checked each geth before they marched off the line of their own accord, to stand in ranks and order themselves according to their own neat and arcane hierarchy.

Benezia looked from Saren’s arm to the geth marching, back and forth. Did her eyes hold … suspicion? The analysis of a battlefield commander, of a person who knew the cost of things? It was all right, Saren told himself. She was too far into the conspiracy to betray him. It had simply been too long since he had seen another person, and now there were four standing with him, waiting for him to say … what?

(Sovereign’s presence distracted him like legs pushing against the translucent skin of the cocoon: scrabble, push.)

“The geth have already proved themselves against the quarians, although we won’t be using them at such large scale at first,” he said. “But I wish to show exactly what they can do.”

He gestured with his living hand. One of the larger units stepped forward, all blue armor and a heavy head leaning over its slouched body. The small feet walked in a gait that would have been oddly turian except for the elastic proportions of the arms and shoulders. It set down the gun it held as it approached, leaving the weapon tucked against the edge of the conveyor belt.

(Click, click, shush.)

Benezia gestured the lead commando forward.

Such closeness with both of them Saren felt in that moment! Where before they had felt intrusive, it was as if they had passed through a force field and, in breathing the atmosphere, had changed their scent or sight and become his siblings. He could almost feel the movement as the asari likewise set down her gun, placing it by Benezia’s feet.

Yes, a web connected them all. It tugged as Shiala crossed her feet one in front of the other, beginning to circle. It wrapped the geth up in its tendrils too, the clicking sounds echoing. Benezia folded her arms.

Shiala darted forward. The geth dropped, all four limbs splayed on the floor, and Saren saw Shiala recalculate mid-step just as she was about to trip over its shoulder. She pivoted, looking for a soft spot between the armor plates, then stomped down on its elbow. Metal creaked.

The geth retracted its arms fast, straightening up at the same time with unnatural speed. Shiala pressed a kick into one knee, then continued her attack on the limbs with a snapping kick to the elbow. Stepping just out of her way, the machine reevaluated its next movements.

Saren narrowed his own eyes, wondering whether the geth would kill her. People did not come to Sovereign to die. People came to Sovereign to be remade, of course …

Shiala’s expression was contorted too, flower petal markings beside her eyes crinkling under a bared-teeth snarl. She gathered a singularity between her hands, blue-silver cascading from the crown of her head down her back. Saren’s new senses registered it as an electric crackle, a dangerous sting on the surface of his/Sovereign’s skin. (A retreat, a shuffling of insects .) The geth staggered.

Shiala’s steps had changed from quick darts to a careful stalk. Another biotic storm gathered across her, compressed into a black hole in her hands. When she fired, Saren felt the tug against his composite metal-and-skin. A steady retreat turned into a lurch as the geth’s shoulder dislocated, the hand drawn in and consumed by the biotic void while the wounded elbow dissolved.

Shiala followed her biotic attack in, the edges of the black hole pulling gently at her clothing before dissolving into sparks. She bowled the geth over. Saren shuddered, resisting the urge to tuck his own head down. The geth stirred up nightmare feelings, entrapment and dissection.

The biotic tide flowed in and out, Shiala’s energy spent and slowly rebuilding as she hunched her shoulders. As she and the gethstood opposite one another and reoriented themselves the atmosphere changed, the two of them becoming mirrors of one another instead of combatants.

“That’s enough,” said Saren. “See now how strong my geth can be.”

Both quiesced. All three, all five; Saren heard the rustle as the other asari soldiers relaxed.

Shiala kept looking at the geth, maybe fascinated by the brightest light in the constellation across its body. Then she returned to Benezia, taking her place again by her side and picking up the gun on the way.

Was Benezia impressed? Only part of Saren was asking.

(The insect turning in the cocoon: claw, press.)

Benezia was still cold. “And Sovereign? Will it be speaking to us today?”

“Does it not always? Does the glory of the ship and the shape of it not convey the strength it carries through the galaxy?” He gestured with his geth hand, watched her eyes narrow as she dismissed him. She looked at the ceiling instead, the white lights studded across the blue-black ceiling and casting green-gray shadows.

Sovereign’s voice echoed from above or around them. “I listen when I need to listen, at the place where I choose. Be soothed in the knowledge that I see each glory within each cocoon. To do more would be to concern myself with a death such as that of one organism in your gut.”

Saren watched Benezia’s expression soften.

“Yes,” she said. “I understand.”

The geth unit stood still as she and the commandos left, the single eye watching the asari’s backs with neon serenity.

 

* * *

 

 

Beyond the observation windows, the planet’s surface slowly bared the colony to the tide of Seyged’s dawn. From orbit, the settlement was no more than a faint glimmer on the planet’s surface. Saren could have imagined the grey light rolling over buildings far below, the red sun bleeding into the southern sky. He did not. He felt no sentiment at all for this slowly turning rock, nor the parasites that squabbled over it.

“Scanning for the new frequencies.” Though Nihlus’s voice was as flat as ever, Saren could pick up the frisson of excitement in his subvocal cues. They both could sense it: their first mission was almost over. Saren stood behind his chair at the control console and watched the pings slowly blip out as the filter passed over them. With each sweep of the scanner, fewer appeared.

Until there was only one.

“Contact,” Nihlus said with quiet surprise. “Confirmed signal origin at point 3.65. The human insurgents are operating within the batarian colony itself.”

“Well done. And the plasma signatures?”

With a few deft commands the scanners isolated a new signature, blooming around the origin point like a slowly undulating flower. “Radiological alert,” Nihlus said, all traces of excitement gone. “The separatists must have intercepted destabilized plasma shipments.”

Saren hummed. “A device with such materials could render the primary batarian settlement uninhabitable by anyone without a Level 5 radiation-filtering exosuit,” he observed dispassionately. “It would utterly eliminate the current batarian presence and leave the humans free to establish their colony elsewhere in the habitable zone.”

Nihuls stood, his back straight as he strode to the command deck’s exit. “We’ll need to be quick. I will go in first, find the bomb’s location. If we can deactivate it before our presence is noted—”

“Sit down, Nihlus.”

Nihlus paused in the doorway. The tension in his body was palpable; Saren could practically see the warring forces within him, the stubborn insubordination that had seen him transferred from squad to squad three separate times throughout his military career. Saren took it as a compliment when Nihlus turned to face him again.

“Saren, there is no time,” he said, each word carefully clipped of all emotion. “The bomb—”

“How much experience do you have in deactivating amateur nucleo-plasma based devices?”

Nihlus remained silent. Saren took a step towards him, leisurely. “What do you imagine will happen if they discover our presence and guess our intent before we can successfully get to the bomb?”

“That would appear to be a question about my capability to execute this mission.”

“You misunderstand me. I have never questioned your capabilities, Nihlus. I am as confident as I ever was that you will make the proper choice.”

Nihlus’s eyes narrowed, but Saren was already turning back to the council. “It is quite easy to be blinded by your instincts, your ideals. There is no shame in it, once you learn to overcome it.. Sit down, and power up the ship’s weapons array.”

Nihlus took a step forward, but not to take a seat. His mandibles were flared in something that might have been shock—or perhaps, fury. “The compound is in a civilian neighborhood.”

“One of many which will be leveled when they activate that bomb.”

“There are colonists, innocent people within the radius of even the most surgical strike with our weapons. Their deaths will be a direct result of our own actions.” Nihlus’s voice rose fractionally, growing more brittle by the second as he struggled to keep it level. Saren respected that degree of self-control. If only it were focused in the correct direction.

Saren took Nihlus’s seat at the control panel, deftly typing in the proper codes. “You focus on our own culpability rather than the sum total of our actions. Why?”

“It is our responsibility to protect the galaxy—”

“And sometimes to protect something, you must cut out a piece of it.” The ship’s observation windows darkened as it shifted into combat mode. On the viewfinder screen, the targeting system scanned across the planet’s surface as if grasping for purchase, before settling on the given coordinates. “Those humans are a disease, Nihlus. Their very instincts demand they spread, replicate, infect every corner of the galaxy. We could attempt to capture them, and show others like them that the Council will be soft on their imperialist actions. Or we could stop this. Now.”

“Are you speaking of _those_ humans?” Nihlus demanded. “Or humans in general?”

“A more relevant question would be, are you questioning my orders?”

Nihlus watched the viewfinder with his hands clenched at his sides. His moment of hesitation betrayed him; he would fall in line. “So we sacrifice a few to save many,” he said flatly.

“No. We sacrifice as many as are needed to save the _right_ people.” The computer finished its calibrations. His finger hovered over the final command button. He raised his head to meet Nihlus’s gaze, still standing above him. “The choice is yours, Nihlus. Are you going to stop me?”

Saren waited, watching Nihlus’s face, until the younger turian looked away. Saren pressed the button. The ship hummed with the sudden buildup of energy, and shuddered with its release. The blip on the targeting screen flickered, and then winked out. Silently, Nihlus walked over to the second monitoring terminal and pulled up the damage report.

“Direct hit,” he said, his voice neutral. “No bomb detonation. Damage contained to a two hundred meter radius. No hostiles remaining.”

“Excellent,” Saren said as he stood. “I will complete the report to the Council. Chart a course for Citadel space. And congratulations.”

Nihlus glanced up, his eyes dull behind the mask of his plates.

“With your actions today, you took the first step towards becoming a Council Spectre. I have no doubt in your ability to follow this path to its end.” Saren gave a short, approving nod. “We have great work ahead of us, Nihlus. You made the right choice.”

He turned to leave, but Nihlus’s voice stopped him. “It’s not quite true, is it?”

Saren paused on the threshold to meet the sharp gaze Nihlus had fixed on him. “The choice was yours. It was always yours.”  

Saren held his gaze a long while. “You will be happier, Nihlus,” he said at last, “if you choose not to believe that.”

When Saren turned and left without another word, the silence from the control room followed him like a shadow.

                                                                                     

* * *

 

 

_You can always find a reason to kill someone_ , Saren had thought, but the breadth and galaxy-wide span of the Sovereign’s plan was greater than that: there was always a reason to keep one’s enemy embalmed.

The medical pod was not a tomb, because there were two minds alive in it still. Or did that make it a pre-tomb, just waiting for the fluids of life to stop and death to congeal inside it? No. Although sometimes Saren felt like he had already been embalmed, bitter fluid pooling in his mouth, he also knew that the pod where he stood supported by thick tubes was not intended to kill him. He knew this because it was clean and vital, and too complex to be any torture device worth its cost, and he knew this because he had lain it in before, and he knew because the voice told him so.

Sovereign’s voice had changed slightly, become small, or perhaps it was simply being forced through a smaller channel. Either way, the impression remained that Saren was growing stronger in the course of the process while Sovereign grew weaker, and this made the gradual plucking of the skin of his face seem more bearable, even necessary.

The tiny claws on the side of the pod looked like a mix between geth technology, all cords and disconnected structures, and Sovereign’s own grasping-hand shape. They darted in and out of his cheek just out of his field of vision. They were so much more delicate than the implements that had risen up around him before, so much more honorable. Painless for now — the thick cord in one of the veins near the surface of his leg saw to that — but he was beginning to see more of his mandible out of the corner of his eye, and the length to which it had been stretched made him distantly queasy.

_You can always find reason to make someone stronger_ , Sovereign whispered, and Saren was unsure whether the ship had taken his words or whether his own memories were mixing with Sovereign’s. This was reassuring; perhaps he was asserting more of his will over the creature, assuring himself that he would be rebuilt only to the extent that he wished. Becoming a Spectre had not granted him the authority he needed, and so, this —

Little jolts of blue light pulsed down the strings on which the tiny surgical claws dangled. The jolts of light did not repeat, but remained steadily glowing under his eye.

He pulled against his restraints, but his arms were held tight, like an embrace.

_You will become like my body_ , Sovereign said. (Scrabble, click.)

Was that the reason? _Like the geth?_ Saren thought that he must have spoken out loud, but with his jaw held open by the machines it should not have been possible.

_Like us all._

_Yes. All of us, except for humanity. Humanity would learn its place._

Saren closed his eyes, willing to bask in the dream of that defeat while the machines did their work.

(Push, turn, Maybe the thing in his mind trying to escape from a cocoon was not Sovereign’s presence at all. Maybe it was his own. He forgot this thought a second after it arrived.)

Dimly, he felt the tiny claws move from his distended jaw to the first bone spur on the left side of his crest. His spurs were unusually long for his age, and the difference would be exaggerated now. His face had been thinning out, too, although he could not be sure whether or not it was because he ate less when surrounded by machines that did not follow any biorhythms at all.

The claws began threading something new into the bone. As they progressed he felt a faint pop, evenly repeating, as the machines stripped the scales off.

                                                                                  

* * *

 

 

Saren fled into memories when it was permitted. It was not always permitted but when it was he flowed into them like water through a channel. Other times he was kept awake and staring as the cold metal entered the ports in the back of his skull with a click that he felt in every part of himself that was not himself and all that he was he was he was began and ended with metal on metal.

_We arrive._

This time, the voice came from inside. Reverberated through the soundless air and rose into his mind with the perfect clarity of a razor inserted beneath the membrane of his eye.

“I am ready,” Saren said, though his words felt flat in the dense air. He was beginning to feel that his response to Sovereign’s call was as irrelevant as a gurgle of digestion. Inevitably the thought of _being_ digested. Saren clenched his mind around that imagining and ground it to nothing. He was still himself. He was still—if not in control, then as close as any mortal race could hope to be when the darkness between the stars became a presence instead of an absence, closing in on every point of light.

On the bridge, beyond the observation window, the void opened its jaws around the small green jewel perched on its tongue. Light from the planet’s sun washed over the planet’s surface; in the crescent of shadow around its edge, the lights of a dozen cities like veins, or clusters of mold.

The glowing of his implants tugged at the edges of his eyes. He kept his gaze on Eden Prime. A human colony. As it was meant to be.

_“Begin it_ ,” they said, and their voice was one.

 

* * *

 

Nihlus was here.

Saren watched him on the screens of security drones, slipping out of the shuttle with those humans at his back, redeemed only slightly by the fact that he left them behind. Things are moving quickly now, the beacon almost secured; Saren watched with vague detachment as impale another human corpse on a spike, already changed by Sovereign’s mighty hand.

( _he_ was that hand

that hand reached inside him—)

Saren closed his eyes until the thoughts abate, and then he opens them. Nihlus was no more than a dark shape scuttling across the white plain of the spy drones’ vision, an insect crawling over a blank wall. His movements were efficient. He executed every floating reaper drone in his path with ease. Saren had, of course, trained him well.

The geth Prime at his side waited for the kill command.

_Proceed to the beacon_. Not Sovereign’s thought, no, it was his own—he only thought it in the memory of Sovereign’s voice, the orders he received from within the ship’s great resonating chambers, kneeling in the center of that darkness as if before an altar but before them there was only emptiness and around him (him! him! not them! him!) all around him everywhere there was Sovereign.

(a cocoon)

_Proceed—_

“Station a contingent of troops to guard your progress,” Saren said. “I will deal with this personally.”

 

* * *

 

“Saren?”

Nihlus was surprised to see him. Not shocked. Not even suspicious, even though he should be— _there was so much more I could have taught you,_ Saren wanted to scream, but the implants so prudently welded into his face kept his jaw tight and such useless sentiments caged. “Nihlus.”

Before, he let Nihlus find him; now he stepped forward, and saw the precise way that Nihlus’s eyes flicked over his body’s improvements. Still, his expression contained no doubt. No fear. It was then, and only then, after so many years, that Saren realized it: Nihlus _trusted_ him. It was almost enough to make him laugh, if he could manage to move his new jaw in such a way.

“This isn’t your mission, Saren,” he said, already lowering his weapon. “What are you doing here?”

“The Council thought you could use a little help on this one.” Saren stepped forward, his hand clasping Nihlus’s pauldron—solid, grounding. For a moment the constant flicker (push) behind his eyes went quiet.

And then Nihlus allowed Saren to step behind him, his eyes trained up at the strange ship on the horizon. Saren’s ship. “I wasn’t expecting to find the geth here,” he said. “The situation’s bad.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got it under control.”

(control

_push_ )

_Proceed to the Beacon_.

Without his intention, his gun began to rise.

_not yet not yet I can still avert this, **I** choose to stop this, STOP—_

Like the motion of a great clock, his arm trembled to a halt. The gun was pointed at Nihlus’s head, who has yet to turn his eyes from the ship. If Saren had not stopped it a moment sooner—only, he had intended to. He had moved it, had he not? His will had moved his arm, no other, for there _was_ no other that could control him.

Nihlus turned, and at last saw the gun pointed at his head.

He watched Nihlus’s reaction in a series of blinks. Nihlus saw the gun first, like any soldier would. “What are you—”

“Drop your weapons, Nihlus. I really would hate to shoot you.” As Saren spoke, the words solidified. They were _his_ , and this was _his intent._

Nihlus was intelligent enough to quickly comply. His gun clattered to the platform; after a slow tilt of Saren’s head, Nihlus kicked it over to him. Rather than raise his hands in a gesture of surrender, Nihlus kept them by his side. His eyes took in the gleaming perfection of Saren’s new body with fresh understanding, basking in its terrible glory. Saren could read the faint horror humming a low melody in his subvocals. But it was Nihlus, not him, whose body was wrong. Too soft. Too organic. Did he not feel the awful vulnerability of his flesh, that could be so easily levered against him?

“So,” Nihlus said quietly. “This is what it’s come to, then.”

Saren’s arm did not budge. He did not question whether he was capable of moving it. “What precisely do you think this is, Nihlus?”

Nihlus laughed. A short, aborted noise. “You always were evasive. What price did they buy you at?”

His mandibles flexed in spite of himself, his new face straining where the metal bit deep. “Very good, Nihlus. Leaping to an accusation you know to be false so I will be forced to contradict it. An effective stalling technique.” Saren tilted his head. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten I taught it to you.”

Nihlus’s fingers twitched as if feeling blindly for a trigger. Saren watched him carefully, knew Nihlus, knew he would have at least one other gun secreted away on his person, was waiting only for the chance to reach for it.

“I also know that if all you wanted was to kill me, we wouldn’t be talking right now,” Nihlus said.

“You’re quite right. In fact, I want nothing more than to speak with you.” Saren didn’t lower the gun. He—couldn’t. He was incapable, even, of the desire to. But still he could speak. “I could not believe my eyes when I realized it was you,” he continued. “And yet, I can hardly imagine a more appropriate reunion.”

Nihlus quirked a brow plate at the meaningless deconstruction of bodies in the gully around them. “I see nothing appropriate here.”

“Your resistance is unoriginal. Revulsion is an instinct, Nihlus. It can be overcome like any other.”

Nihlus’s eyes drifted down to the metal that is now a part of Saren himself. “And when did you _overcome_ it?”

For a moment Saren said nothing. Nihlus’s words sank into him, stirring something in the silt. When? When had it been? When, exactly, had this happened to him? This far from Sovereign (his mind is not his own), no, _no_ , his mind was always his own, now in this moment and when he stood at the center of the Reaper’s glory, he was whole and complete and he was _un-tampered with—_

“Saren.” Nihlus actually took a step closer. “Whatever they’re doing to you—we can stop this. I can help you.”

“ _You_ can help _me_?” The ridiculousness of the statement snapped Saren out of his strange frame of mind. He sighed. Perhaps he should have felt nostalgic for their ever-constant debates, always good natured until they were not. Instead he felt nothing more than the hum of metal embedded in his skin, the gush of something cold into his chest with every heartbeat from the metal tubes which tunneled into it. He thought—he had to assume it was blood. “I can make you understand, Nihlus. I failed you, when I was your mentor—I couldn’t make you see. Now all you need to do is come with me, and he will _show_ you—”

“You’re insane.” Nihlus spoke flatly. Saren’s words meant nothing to him. But Saren was _more_ now—he should be able to—he _needed_ to—

“You know me, Nihlus.” Saren stepped forward, just once, so the distance between them was no vast gulf. “Did I ever strike you as the sort to lose my mind?”

“No,” Nihlus said. “But today has been full of surprises.”

“You do not believe I am insane,” Saren decided, watching Nihlus’s expression. “Intelligence and understanding were never your weak points.”

“And what was?”

“Sentimentality.” Another step. Saren knew well how dangerous Nihlus could be. The hum of metal singing in his entire body was beginning to build. “Nonetheless, you were a good agent. We will need more like you in the days to come. Allow me to convince you—”

Nihlus laughed in his face. From the way his eyes stayed locked on Saren’s, Saren could tell he was scanning for accessible weapons on Saren’s body in his peripheral vision. “Is that what you think is happening here, Saren? That we’re going to have a discussion like two rational people in which you use logic to convince me of your arguments, while you just happen to have a gun to my head?” Nihlus shook his head. “No. No, Saren. That’s not how this is going to work.”

His voice seemed to drift to Saren from somewhere far away, tearing through veils of memory. Saren was drifting too. He had to hold on. He had to do this, no matter how heavy his finger felt on the trigger, as if gravity were steadily tugging it back, preparing the bullet that would end their debate for good.

“I want to help you,” Saren tried to say, but his tongue was heavy in his mouth. _Kill him_. Not his voice, and yet should he not—no, no. The man before him was a stranger. Nihlus’s face warped and bulged without moving, becoming familiar, then monstrous. He took a step forward, reached his spare hand out as if to sink the talon’s into the flesh beneath Nihuls’s jaw, to hook him and hold him in place so Saren could _think_. His hand settled on the back of Nihus’s neck and Nihlus went rigid. The muzzle of Saren’s gun pressed against his windpipe.

“I have found the proper hand,” Saren said, unbearably kind. “I allow myself to be wielded.”

Nihlus stared at him. His eyes, unbelievably, were sad. “No,” he said at last. “You don’t.”

(a long claw probing at the membrane, pressing a sharp point on its surface)

Nihlus moved quickly. As if watching a memory, Saren observed; the tension rippling down Nihlus’s arm as he went for the pistol on Saren’s hip, his neck twisting away. At once, gravity became a force that could not be borne, the pressure of it bearing down on his hand, on the trigger, a silent roar from every corner of his body that echoed in every hallway of the ship—

_KILL HIM_

(the membrane tears.)

—Nihlus fell backwards, missing half his neck. He had twisted far enough away that the shot tore out the side of it rather than blasting straight through the spinal cord—as a result, it would be slower. Nihlus was bleeding out.

Saren stared down at him as he twitched on the ground, hands flying up to grasp at the place where half his neck had been, the blue gush, the white glistening ridges of bone, shattered plate. A kind of incomprehensible agony on Nihlus’s face, if Saren had not experienced it himself. He watched.

“I didn’t,” Saren said over the choked gags. “I did not intend—” He stared down at the gun. He had—fired it? Memory pulses. The words echoed through some vast space within him reverberating around the solid outline of the lie at its center: that there had been no choice to begin with, _you can always find a reason to kill someone until your reason is stripped from you piece by piece until nothing else remains_

Saren turned away. The translucent computer screen sewn over his left eye registered three heat signatures loping through the gully towards his location. He recognized their outline. Human. Nihuls’s squadmates. He had worked with them willingly, had sullied himself and his status—yes. The truth began to fall into place.

Saren _had_ chosen this, had scoured Nihus’s corruption from their species, had pulled the trigger of his own free will and the thought _kill him_ had been his own.

A faint blue mist dots the pipes and plates of his implants. With a hand he cannot feel, he wipes the blood away. _You can always find a reason to kill someone._ The thought, as it comes unbidden and in the echo of Sovereign’s voice, is a comfort though he doesn’t know why.


End file.
